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Immunoregulatory pathways in pregnancy

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Title Immunoregulatory pathways in pregnancy
 
Creator Hegde, Umashashi C
Ranpura, Sandeep
D'Souza, Serena
Raghavan, Vijaya P
 
Description 207-219
Murine pregnancy is characterized by transient thymic
atrophy and splenomegally. Several laboratories are investigating the
immunoregulatory mechanisms during pregnancy, and the majority of these studies
are primarily focused on the immunological changes either in the uterus or the
thymus and not much information is available on the immunological changes in the
spleen that result in transient splenomegally. An attempt has been made in this
review to understand the significance of thymic atrophy, splenomegally and
local immune changes in the uterus to understand the

overall immunomodulatory mechanisms in pregnant
mother. The most significant change which occurs soon after mating is the
infiltration of immune cell s such as macrophages and yδ-T cells into the
uterus indicating that the mother's immune system detects the presence of
foreign antigens in the reproductive tract. The sensitized cells appear to
migrate to the secondary lymphoid organs including the spleen. The
microenvironment in the spleen is conducive for the cell -cell contact and
generation of immune response. The major changes that occur in the spleen are,t
he induction of T-cell dependent B-cell response on day-1 post-coitum (P.C),
generation of antibody producing B-cells on day-3 and also proliferation of CD8+
T-cells that peaks on day-3 of pregnancy. The weight of the spleen reaches a peak
on day- 10 in mice. Thereafter, on day-15 of pregnancy, lymphocyte apoptosis is
seen in the spleen indicating the deletion of peripheral sensitized cells. This
results in decrease in spleen weight to that of normal non-pregnant mice. The
decrease in thymic weight after day-5 pregnancy was

associated with the increased apoptosis of cortical
thymocytes. This perhaps is due to negative selection of self-reactive thymocytes.
Our studies have demonstrated that the pregnancy associated monoclonal antibodies
react with antigens of sperm indicating that the mother's immune system
recognizes and responds to the constituents of the semen to produce
nonprecipitating asymmetric auto antibodies (NPAA) or blocking antibodies which
have favourable effects on pregnancy. It is postulated that
the mother's immune response could be directed to some antigens of sperm along
with some conserved antigens such as heat shock proteins (HSP) that are present
both in sperm and in the mother. It may be speculated that after

the initial priming to some conserved antigens of
sperm and due to the presence of similar an ti gens in the mother, these activated
clones are eliminated both in the primary and secondary lymphoid organs to
prevent autoimmunity in the mother during pregnancy.
 
Date 2012-12-25T18:16:52Z
2012-12-25T18:16:52Z
2001-08
 
Type Article
 
Identifier 0975-0959 (Online); 0301-1208 (Print)
http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/15296
 
Language en_US
 
Rights CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India
 
Publisher NISCAIR-CSIR, India
 
Source IJBB Vol.38(4) [August 2001]